Posted on 09/13/2015 4:20:08 PM PDT by South40
U.S. Republican party presidential frontrunner Donald Trump said on Sunday high salaries paid to chief executives were a "joke" and a "disgrace" and said these were often approved by company boards stacked with the CEO's friends.
Trump, a real estate mogul who has said he plans to use his net worth of $8.7 billion to fund his White House campaign, said in an interview with CBS's "Face the Nation" that it was hard to tackle the question of corporate pay because too many corporate boards lacked independence.
"It's disgraceful. Sometimes the boards rule but I would probably say it's less than 10 percent; and you see these guys making enormous amounts of money. It's a total and complete joke," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
If the “captains of Industry” has steered us to prosperity, they would be worth it. But instead thy sold us out with Free Trade and off shoring. F em all.
I happen to agree with him again.
Jeff Immelt is not worth what he is being paid.
I have been saying that for years. These boards and executives rape companies and pillage them.
To the gallows, as Marx said.
No concern of the government.
First CEO to get the axe: DISNEY.
Who laid off all his troops, then hired wall-to-wall H1B’s.
The comments should be interesting and smart, as usual.
I sometimes read all the comments on FR if I’m not sure about a certain issue, and the insight from the members really helps me alot.
Pot-kettle - geeze, folks
As long as Trump doesn’t believe that the government should set a limit (or punitive tax) on high CEO pay, I’m ok with what he says.
Although personally, I don’t have enough info to judge which CEOs are overpaid. I think that’s a judgment that the shareholders have to make.
Still, if Trump is advocating that the government act to limit CEO pay, no matter how exorbitant, then I will never, ever vote for him.
What corporations pay their employees is only the business of the stockholders. Not the government. Or any outsiders.
CEO's control the board room as much as they can and encourage their hand-picked board members to vote for their astronomical pay packages...sometimes not even based on performance.
Seems your judgment is stuck in the mud down there.
I thought Trump was running for president. Why waste our time answering this irrelevant question.
central_va:
“The consumer did not benefit as the marginal cost reduction from exploiting coolie labor was not passed on to the retailer and hence it went to the bottom line.”
Soul of The South:
True. The enhanced margins went into the hands of the speculators. Corporations divested manufacturing in favor of offshoring. The billions of dollars of capital once invested in productive equipment, as well as the improved margins, were handed over to the Wall Street banks to fund stock buybacks. Billions, if not trillions of dollars of capital were consumed in the stock market casino instead of being invested in modern equipment to make US manufacturing competitive.
Up to about 1970, American CEO’s followed a career path through sales and marketing where they learned to understand customers and producing products to meet customer needs or they came up through manufacturing and product development where they learned how to make products efficiently and deploy capital and labor effectively. Whether from sales/marketing or manufacturing, executives had to earn their stripes by actually producing something of value and being measured and rewarded for real results.
In the 1970’s the corporate staff financial executives and lawyers, with their MBA’s and law degrees, wrested power from the producer executives. These Ivy League educated administrative managers created “value” through financial manipulation and legal artifices, not by producing and selling products. Hence, instead of deploying corporate capital in the 1980’s and 1990’s to modernize the factories built in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the financial CEO’s teamed with Wall Street banks to put American industry through multiple waves of restructuring, downsizing, acquisition, divestiture, and offshoring. Production was sent overseas, balance sheets were leveraged, divisions were sold or shut down, employees were shed. Once great and mighty companies (US Steel, Burlington Industries, Westinghouse, and hundreds of others) stopped growing and innovating ceding entire markets and industries to foreign competitors.
Instead of innovating and investing in improving the productivity of their businesses, the financial CEO’s allied with big government to lower tariffs and quotas so the shedding of manufacturing assets could be financially justified. Once great American factories built in the 1950’s and 1960’s were shuttered and the capital to rebuild them was sent to build modern, efficient factories in foreign countries. The financiers also changed executive compensation from being primarily salary based to salary + megabonuses + lucrative stock options. Executive pay was manipulated to enrich the highest paid executives in the firm. In the previous era the CEO made 10 to 12X the annual pay of the factory worker. Under modern, highly manipulated executive compensation structures it is not uncommon for the CEO to make hundreds of times the wages of the lowest paid workers. Even the poorest performing CEO’s, many of whom destroyed their companies, walked away with millions of dollars in guaranteed bonuses, stock grants, and golden parachute severance payments. Meanwhile, US factory workers with decades of experience were forced to train their foreign replacements and then were cast aside with a few weeks of severance pay.
The modern concept of “free trade” has been an absolute failure for the US economy and the American worker. Like every failed government program its defenders and vested interests continue to claim success even in the face of facts that scream failure.
Slap a 30% or higher tariff on all imported goods. Put in place a corporate tax rate of 0% on profits made from US sourced raw materials and components in US factories while retaining a 30% profit rate on profits generated from overseas sourced products. Watch capital flow into US manufacturing and the creation of millions of middle class jobs. Better the IRA and 401K savings of American workers be invested in new factories, producing goods for American citizens, than continuing to put it in the hands of Wall Street mutual funds where it is churned in the stock market in order to siphon off billions in transaction fees which flow into the pockets of the speculators.
Only a very small number of CEOs have very high salaries.
The average salary of all CEOs of publicly held companies is $165K. There are thousands of such companies.
I disagree. I understand that some CEOs are overpaid. But the general meme is false.
Don’t speak of reason to south40...that is not a language he understands.
FR has a much larger population of fools than I’d have thought possible. Maybe it’s just that “I see a bandwagon, so I’m gonna jump on it” thing....
So, Donald. Are you a free market capitalist or not?
Or do you want the government to get involved EVEN MORE in businesses?
Companies big and small should be allowed to decide what they pay anybody.
Which side are you on Donald? Because I am starting to wonder.
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